Image or imagination? - The problem of photographic represenation

Contents

Introduction

Image or Imagination? - The Problem of Photographic Representation
1 Representation: Man’s access to the world
2 Photography: A brief history of its practices and discourses
3 Photographic representation: Reflections on the myth of photographic truth

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

In 1994, a portrait of O. J. Simpson appeared on the front page of Newsweek and Time, showing the former football star as the object of a mug shot: “unsmiling, unadorned” (Sturken / Cartwright 24). Whereas Newsweek left the picture as it was, “Time heightened the contrast and darkened Simpson’s skin tone […] reputedly for ‘aesthetic’ reasons” (Ibid 24). This portrayal suggested that Simpson be labelled a convict even before the trial had started. Apparently, conventional wisdom dictates that somebody who is depicted in a mug shot is guilty, no matter whether it is true or not (Ibid 24). Notably in the past, darker skin was often used to connote evil and guilt, for example in literature, in the theatre, and in the cinematic media (Ibid 24). This prejudice might have been activated in some readers of Time. The picture had undergone a change of colour and left its original context, that is to say the police’s data system. This is how it acquired a new meaning and thereby damaged O. J. Simpson’s reputation.

Altered pictures like the one described above have always caused much controversy. Even when photography was still in its infancy, manipulative arrangement was already an issue (Sachsse 28). Nowadays, digital photography in particular faces an erosion of trust because newsmagazines and newspapers make frequent use of various manipulation techniques (Thomas 43), which fiercely challenges “the shared belief that photographs are objective or truthful records of events” (Sturken / Cartwright 17).

Oddly enough, even though a picture may ‘lie’, it is still used as evidence in the courtroom (Solomon-Godeau 169) or understood as a valuable historical document, as the following entry in an academic booklet published by the University of Tübingen shows: “The survey [of American cultural history] will be accompanied by the analysis and discussion of selected photographic images which can be understood as iconic representations of the given period” (Tonn 21).

‘Representation’, it seems, is a central issue in the debate on photographic authenticity. What kind of representation makes a picture authentic? How is authenticity defined in the first place? Does it refer to “the expression of the photographer’s interior” or “to the world’s exterior” (Solomon-Godeau 152), which is linked with the question of whether photography primarily belongs to the fine arts or whether it is rather a technical process triggered by a button that anyone could press. Also, we may ask whether there is such a thing as reality at all that can be captured by a camera or if it is fashioned, wrought in a creative sense. Does a picture represent something via mimesis that is thought to have existed prior to its depiction, or does it present itself to the viewer as an empty vessel which must be worked upon and filled before it can mean anything (Sturken / Cartwright 12)? Considering the latter, to what extent would the viewer be guided by an “ideology inscribed in various photographic uses” (Solomon-Godeau 160)? If images are read as cultural codes instead of “aesthetic self-referencing” art, the arrival of post-modernism in photography becomes manifest (Solomon-Godeau 160). Manipulated pictures like the ones used in fashion magazines would then point to a “hyperreality” without an “origin” or referent, to use structuralist terminology (Ibid 161). Finally, who can rightfully claim ownership of a photographic image if it is considered a product of written light, as its etymology suggests (Guralnik 326 / 560)?

In my analysis of photography’s oscillation between image and imagination, with the two terms representing something traditionally thought of as real on the one hand and something thought of as constructed on the other hand, I want to address these questions and analyse how and what a picture represents. I argue that meaning is to a large extent constructed by the viewer and does not exist as an inherent quality of images. Consequently, whether an altered picture is seen as fraud or merely as an optimisation is a very subjective matter and strongly depends on contextual information. The viewer’s judgement is influenced by the path through which the image is mediated and the context in which it is embedded (Lister 221), but his judgement is also dependent on what the image means to him, not only on what he sees in it (Rosler 158). This is not to say that photographs can under no circumstances be used as evidence. However, what does happen is that their truth-value is often overestimated (Ibid 141). In any case, manipulation is not a side-effect that coincided with the birth of digital photography. “Selection, framing, and personalization” have always played an important role in film photography (Sturken / Cartwright 16).

After a general introduction to the basic principles of representation and their development up to the present point of time, I will continue with a brief history of photographic practices and analyse how issues of photographic realism were dealt with in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I will then turn to what is often called “the myth of photographic truth” (e.g. in Sturken / Cartwright 16) and analyse the role of representation in both traditional and digital photography. In this last chapter, ‘ideology’ will be included as an important key term.

In summary, I want to argue that photography is capable of meaning, or representing, “more than one fixed thing”, that it consists of “polysemic signs” and operates both on the basis of predefined “designed frameworks and structures” and personal input (Lister 226).

Image or Imagination? - The Problem of Photographic Representation

1 Representation: Man’s access to the world

Man, in philosophic discourse, is a “homo symbolicum”, “a representational animal” which gains access to the world by replacing things with symbols from early childhood onwards (Mitchell 11). Plato and Aristotle were the first to claim that art was a form of representation (Ibid 11). Both believed that humans made sense of the world via mimesis, that is by imitation (Ibid 11). Their notions differ only insofar as Plato thought that what was imitated was merely shadows cast by the world of Essence so that there was a twofold reflection at work. (Reinfandt 3). Aristotle argued that art was simply an imitation of “the nature of things” or “human action” (Ibid 3), but Plato was convinced that representation was only a substitute for the real thing and could even cause damage since people might feel tempted to imitate representations of evil actions (Mitchell 14-15).

Bur what is “realism” in the first place? According to Ludmilla Jordanova, author of an essay about realist practices in the conceptualisation of museums, there is no clear-cut definition but merely “common ground”: “A set of representational practices, theories, and assumptions, whether philosophical or aesthetic”, which refer “viewers / readers on to other supposedly more genuine, authentic, or real states of affairs”, with the authentic being “an exact, totally accurate version of another object” (258-259). There is a sense of tautology in this outline of realism. Apart from still wondering what it is that makes a thing real, we cannot be too sure that an accurate copy of an object vouches, in fact, for the realness of this object.

At this point, it is necessary to sketch the historical development of human perception and the concomitant divide between subjectivity and objectivity. Up until the Renaissance, the common assumption was that there was an inherent, objective truth to be found in the world. With the emergence of Humanism, the self-conscious subject came into being (Hick 19). As a consequence of this process, art came to be regarded as the result of man’s creative potential with a strong dependency on interior, subjective truth and authenticity (Ibid 21). There were thus two cultural and philosophical positions in the Renaissance which ran parallel to each other: Objectivism with its postulate to return to the res, the things themselves, and subjectivism with its focus on humanistic claims (Ibid 21). Between the 1930s and 1950s, liberal humanism dominated the cultural discourse and tried to establish notions like the immutability of human nature or the secure possession of individuality (Barry 18 / 32). In the post-war period, with the transition to theory, those ideas came under fire (Ibid 32). The introduction of cultural theory brought forth a more sceptical dimension resembling Michel de Montaigne’s position in the sixteenth century (Kunzmann 97). According to this approach, “truth is provisional” and “meaning is contingent” as well as “socially constructed” (Barry 26 / 34). As a consequence, it is impossible to establish “overarching fixed ‘truths’” or any “fixed and reliable truth” (Ibid 34).

Since the beginning of the early modern period up to (post-) modernity, the mimetic concept has thus been accompanied by an “expressive and reflexive” approach, based on “the emerging interface of subjectivity and mediality” presently associated with Romanticism, Modernism and Post-Modernism (Reinfandt 5). The subjective and the objective positions are under constant negotiation (Ibid 4).

“Mediality” refers to the logic of social constructivism: “Language and systems of representation do not reflect an already existing reality so much as they organize, construct, and mediate our understanding of reality, emotion, and imagination” (Sturken / Cartwright 13). For example, knowledge about what we think of as facts is mediated through various channels such as “research”, “teaching”, and “display” (Jordanova 259). If something is put on display for teaching purposes, ambiguity is likely to be limited and other possible meanings might be suppressed (Ibid 259). On the other hand, sometimes it is only possible to make sense of a thing if we have already accumulated a certain amount of cultural knowledge to understand, say, intertextual allusions (Sturken / Cartwright 30). It is generally important to take into account the surroundings of representational practices – the context of a piece of work (museum, newspaper, advertisement etc.) and the interpreting spectator (Ibid 29).

If the meaning of an artefact is socially constructed, it cannot be taken as the ‘real’ thing without further thought. René Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe reminds the viewer of this problem. There is a line which says “This is not a pipe” in French. Obviously, what is depicted in the picture is a pipe, but it is only depicted. It is not an actual pipe but its representation. “One could not pick up and smoke this pipe” (Ibid 15). The semiotic differentiation between the signified and the referent is crucial when it comes to matters of ‘the real’. In post-modern culture, such a referent may not even exist anymore. Sherrie Levine, for example, photographed a photograph which shows a little boy. She thinks it possible that the viewer’s interest in the original leads him directly to an interest in the boy himself, but once arrived at this point, “the art is gone” (Solomon-Godeau 153). It seems that “the desire of representation exists only insofar that it never be fulfilled, insofar as the original always be deferred. It is only in the absence of the original that representation may take place” (Ibid 154). In post-modern culture, the loss of the original may be effectuated by “hyper-representation”, an effect of the omnipresence of reproductions. Reality itself becomes “an endless network of representations” embedded in advertising and mass media (Mitchell 16).

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